Public service officials help people check in at a COVID-19 drive-through vaccination site in Robstown, Texas, February 9, 2021.
Go Nakamura | Reuters
The Biden government will partner with Texas officials to build three new community vaccination centers in Dallas, Arlington and Houston, a member of President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response team announced on Wednesday.
The three centers, which will start operating the week of February 22, will allow healthcare professionals to administer a total of more than 10,000 vaccines per day, Jeff Zients, Covid of Biden czar, told reporters during a news conference at White House on the pandemic. “We are deploying teams immediately to work with state and local jurisdiction,” he said.
Zients also said on Wednesday that he will join New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at a news conference to formally announce the development of two new Covid vaccine centers in that state to help distribute vaccines to “underserved communities”.
The announcement came days after the government said it was sending active troops to California to help Covid-19 vaccination sites there. Biden is trying to accelerate the pace of vaccinations in the U.S. after a slower-than-expected implementation under former President Donald Trump, and federal officials are also pressing states to administer vaccines more quickly.
The troops will arrive in California this week and begin operations on Monday, US officials said.
Approximately 33 million of about 331 million Americans received at least their first dose of the two-dose Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And 9.8 million of these people have already had their second chance.
American officials also expect vaccine supply to increase after Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine is authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, which could happen later this month. The FDA scheduled a meeting of its Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on February 26 to discuss the vaccine, and the United States could authorize it the next day.
Last week, Andy Slavitt, senior consultant on the Biden Covid-19 response team, said that some health professionals were regularly withholding vaccines for the second injection, causing vaccine appointments to be canceled and preventing some Americans from receiving the first doses.
“We want to make it clear that we understand why healthcare professionals did this, but that it doesn’t have to and it shouldn’t happen,” he told reporters on February 1, adding that US officials know that Covid’s vaccine shipments to states were often unpredictable during the initial launch in late December.
White House chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on Wednesday that many states are now stopping vaccinating only health care providers, nursing homes and the elderly and are starting to give vaccines to people with health problems. underlying.
He urged people with these conditions to be vaccinated, saying they are more vulnerable to severe Covid-19. “It is precisely these people who should be vaccinated,” he added. “This is something that will be very beneficial for you.”